Stranger in a Strange Land

[mukudori]

So I spent all of last night up until 4:30AM watching The L Word with five lesbians, talking about relationships and sex.
I've never been called a faggot so many times in my life.

Which is weird, because I spent Saturday night discussing the merits of mushrooms and the wonders of being alive with five gay men, and they didn't mention that word.

Comments

[titanstein]

In its derogatory definition, faggot usually only applies to gay men. And why would a gay man say such a hurtful word to another? From my experience, gay men are usually more accepting and mature about such conversations than gay women are. Although there are exceptions, such as I do work with a lesbian couple who are married and they're amongst the coolest people I know...But mostly from college in general, I've found there to be a distinct behavior difference between gay men and gay women towards sexuality/relationships/sex.

Feel free to correct me, I find the topic fascinating!

[snowcoma]

I hope you don't mind me jumping in here, I just have a thought on the matter. There's a large movement within feminism to reclaim hurtful words and perhaps some of that is carrying over in this instance?

There also seem to be more gender-oriented derogatory terms for women than men in common usage (bitch, slut, whore, cunt, and dyke for women, and faggot for men), so perhaps we're slightly more desensitized to the whole thing.

Re: Feel free to correct me, I find the topic fascinating!

[titanstein]

I suppose you're right with the desensitized thing. But I just find it interesting that the women were more interested in calling names while the guys could care less/didn't choose to say that. Also, there has to be something said for the mixed company of a guy with women than with a group of men. But that's getting into a whole bunch of psychology that I don't even think I can intelligently talk about.

Brian, please enlighten us with your thoughts!

Re: Feel free to correct me, I find the topic fascinating!

[mukudori]

Well, I'd certainly heard gay men use the word fag, much the way black men use the N-word, so it's probably something they wouldn't usually apply to hetero friends, and hetero friends shouldn't try to use with regards to gay men

[jackalopemonger]

This makes me think of:

[mukudori]

Pretty awesome.